The PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Course
Francesca DiacoExpert buoyancy control allows divers to closely explore vulnerable reefs and more skillfully photograph marine life.
It’s not hyperbole to say that good buoyancy is at the core of all diving after — and including — your Open Water Diver certification. Good buoyancy makes your gas supply last longer, fish interactions and underwater photography more rewarding, drift diving more relaxing, and is essential as you expand your diving experience into wrecks, caverns and the dark night.
What do you learn in the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy course? Here’s a breakdown:
Benefits of the course
Improving your buoyancy skills allows you to swim underwater more naturally, use less gas, navigate sites more safely at a proper depth and observe the underwater environment without disturbing it.
Necessary prerequisites
You must be a PADI Open Water Diver or Junior Open Water Diver and at least 10 years old. Or, you can do it in conjunction with your Open Water Diver course.
Enroll in a PADI eLearning Course Here
What you’ll learn
You’ll learn more about how to properly determine the exact weight you need, as well as how to fine-tune buoyancy using fin techniques and breathing control. You’ll also learn how to trim your weight system — by adjusting where you wear your weight — so that you move in a more horizontal swimming position, and how to streamline your gear to eliminate protruding and dangling equipment. All of this will make you a buoyancy ninja.
From PADI Expert Karl Shreeves
“Ever notice that you can just tell skilled divers by the way they glide over the reef without stirring up silt or kicking the coral? They get closer to fish and creatures without disturbing them, almost like they’re sea creatures themselves. When there’s no current, they make safety stops just hanging effortlessly midwater. It can look like these divers have a mysterious, almost instinctive ability they were lucky enough to be born with, but that’s not the case. They simply learned and practiced refinements to the weighting, buoyancy control and streamlining skills you already have, and like any skill you get there faster through training — the Peak Performance Buoyancy course.”
